Roach Motel (insect trap)

Roach Motel is a brand of a roach bait device designed to catch cockroaches. Although the term is the subject of a trademark registration by the insect control brand Black Flag, the phrase has come to be used as a reference to all traps that use a scent or other form of bait to lure cockroaches into a compartment in which a sticky substance causes them to become trapped.

Early versions of the Roach Motels used food-based bait, but later designs incorporated pheromones. The widely known tagline of the Roach Motel was "Roaches check in -- but they don't check out!" In the 1980s, this line was frequently delivered by Muhammad Ali, who was then a spokesman for the product.

The Roach Motel in popular culture

In "", Freddy Krueger kills a teenage girl (played by Brooke Theiss) by turning her into a cockroach, trapping her in a roach motel, and squishing it in his hand.

In "Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves", the main characters cut through a roach motel to escape from a cockroach that is pursuing them.

In "Men in Black (film)", Tommy Lee Jones states that "Roaches check in", and Will Smith completes it by saying "but they don't check out."